“It isn’t a goose, Jerry,” he told me quickly. “It’s a spotted gander.”
CHAPTER IV
ADMIRAL PEPPER
The mystery that hung over the big stone house, like a bat’s shadow, was a strange tangle. We could see that, all right. And now, to help things along to even greater mystery, had come the disappearance of the granddaughter.
Was there, we wondered, some hidden tie-up between the girl’s disappearance and the unusual gander? We looked to the old man for an answer to that, but he could tell us nothing. The more we questioned him, when we got him in the house, the dumber he acted. Had he seen the granddaughter in Pardyville? He didn’t know—he guessed he had one minute, and the next minute he guessed he hadn’t. Nor could he tell us where he had gotten the gander, which we had left on the front porch.
Another thing—the old man had passed us in his rickety car at six-thirty, headed for home. Yet we had beat him here by at least three hours. Where had he been in that three hours? When we asked him, he just stared at us. Where had he been? Why, he had been on the road headed for home, of course. But we knew better. He had been some place else ... to more mystery! Instead of turning to the left at the sandy crossroad, where we had turned, he had kept on down the concrete. But why? What had taken him past the turn? Where had he been? Finding it did no good to question him, we gave up, hopeful that his head would clear up over night.
After the long day, with its ups and downs, Mrs. Doane was done up, as her face showed. But it would do her no good to go to bed, she told us, nodding wearily. For how could she sleep with the awful picture in her mind of the missing granddaughter lying unconscious beside the deserted concrete highway?
“She could have jounced out of the car and Pa never would have missed her. That’s him. Oh, at times I feel as though I could take him and shake his pants off. He isn’t foolish—don’t deceive yourself on that point. He’s just naturally dumb.”
“Now, Ma—” came whiningly, as the blank-eyed old man pottered around the kitchen, feeling of his head as though it was some connected part of him that he had just discovered.
“Keep still!” came the impatient command. “I’m disgusted with you.”
“Please, Ma—”